How many of those activists weren’t bothered by what Bush did because he was Republican? How many of them were gun-ho for intimidation of anti-globalism protesters? Now what, it is the Freepers and Tea-baggers turn? Sounds like poetic irony to me. If today’s right opposition had any sense they would have opposed Bush and helped the left opposition stop the tyranny. Why vote for another Bush? Or another Roosevelt? Or another… You get the picture.

The Grinols case (for those that don’t know what this is: basically “birther movement”) will reach the Supreme Court February 15th.

I would not be surprised if Orly Taitz wins she loses and the security state wins. It may be that the government either has state secrets it is protecting or will make the claim that it was protecting state secrets.

Regardless of the truth, Orly Taitz may become known as someone who ousted a patriotic American President who served his country and jeopardized national security. I am assuming that enough secrets (“secrets”?) are revealed that Obama can no longer serve as President. Perhaps just revealing that the Supreme Court seals its findings in the Grinols case is enough to force Obama to resign.

I wonder what the outcome of the Birther movement and Wikileaks, or rather, shall I say, the media spin surrounding them will be. Will the public sentiment change so much that we get a secrets act with little protest, that is, will it become a crime to reveal classified information regardless of intent, that is, the notion of mens rea or “guilty mind” is discarded? Perhaps the public sentiment will be less inclined to question the appropriateness of the Presidential kill list. Perhaps instead of a secrets act, the kill list method will be used the next time around. Perhaps the spin will be that if the President had people like Taitz and Grinols liquidated national security would not have been compromised.

Regardless of whether or not national security is jeopardize (or the government makes the claim), what about the possibilities regarding impeachment? Will the Obama administration point out that laws are enforced in a totally arbitrary way? After all, Bush wasn’t even elected. I doubt that they’ll take that route.

I have trouble seeing how Obama can justify staying in power if it is the case that he cannot prove he is qualified to be President. Perhaps I missed something. Let us say he makes a case and the Republicans try to impeach him. Either that or let us say the Republicans claim a Supreme Court coverup. It seems odd that Romney the Zombie rose from the dead shortly before the election and with the addition help of media spin the race became a dead heat just before election day. Things looked bad for the Democrats. All of that should have been bad for Obama, but supposedly he won, and even more spectacularly the Democrats even gained a few seats in the Senate. Since there are 53 Democrats and the Republicans need 67 votes to impeach, my guess is that there would be a failed impeachment. A likely outcome of a failed impeachment is that Obama becomes emboldened to exercise dictatorial powers (to a much greater extent than has been done by Bush and Obama in the past 11 years).

There is also the question of how some extreme right-winger(s) will respond, even if there is no attempt to impeach but the government seals the Grinols case.

As for land, what could be done is the following: Make landholders responsible for infrastructure to the extent possible. When funding infrastructure that landholders can’t be expected to maintain, resort to assessments.

The reasoning is as follows: Infrastructure has to be paid for anyway. With lower taxes a given jurisdiction becomes a more coveted location to set up shop. In turn it should be easier to charge higher rents. I suspect that when the increase in the value of land doesn’t at least match the cost of a particular investment in infrastructure, the infrastructure in question isn’t economical.

Interstate highways are an example of something that should be funded by assessments. The same can probably be said of projects funded by other means under Ohio’s “Third Frontier” Constitutional amendment.

As for natural resources, taxing natural resources discourages their use and lowers their value.

Another possibility is to tax the land and natural resource content of imported goods. Perhaps tax land and natural resources at near 100% and allow credits for those jurisdictions which do the same. This may be a complicated approach, but has its merits.

Even the above approach has its problems, Saudi Arabia could tax its own oil and get credits for that when exporting to the U.S. under that approach. The natural resources are concentrated in countries that refuse to develop. Another matter is that we all live on the same planet. In other words, its not really their oil either. It can even be argued that its ours because of the fact that it takes Western technology to extract it.

We could instead use high natural resource taxes to not only fund dividends/social salaries to all citizens but to buy up the revenue stream from natural resources through some future innovations in the financial markets as well. Such a policy would have the effect of a high sales tax on consumption, thereby encouraging investing and lowering interest rates. (As stated in an earlier posting I believe that by using rent (land and natural resources) to corner capital opportunity has been hoarded by the few and rates of return kept artificially high.)

In a globalized economy capital seeks the highest rate of return, so using income and wealth taxes are unfortunately becoming increasingly non-viable options.

It would be best if America developed alternative sources of natural resources, even if that means building something along the lines of StarTram or John “Josh” Storrs Hall’s Space Pier in order to make the cost of reaching orbit (on a per unit of mass basis) low enough. Then use plasma rockets, tethers, or light sails and lasers to get to a high enough of an orbit to use mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion (M2P2) the rest of the way.

Subject: Land use and rent (land and natural resources) revisted OR geolibertarianism by other means — Part 3: land value tax (lvt) — problems

I cannot help but think that land-value taxation is not without its problems.

It attacks land owners in a given jurisdiction but does nothing about what goes on outside a given jurisdiction. In other words, it puts some land owners at a disadvantage by changing the rules in the middle of the game for SOME land owners.

A land value tax does nothing about natural resources. Not only is natural resources probably more important, but a given jurisdiction may be resource poor. Indeed, those jurisdictions that are resource-rich are at such an advanatge that they have no incentive to be pro-growth. They can be lazy, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent. All they need to do if they run into trouble is another resource extraction fix. Look at the third world and Middle East for prime examples of this problem. Thanks to privatization things have only gotten worse in the Middle East and now there is a “database” — The Database / Al Qaeda which is MAD. The only jurisdictions that might consider geolibertarianism are those that don’t have the resources to begin with.

It should now be clear that Whatever policy is implimented, it must have a far reach. It must undo the effects of privatizing the surface area and natural resources. Privatized surface area and natural resources is here to stay — work around it!

Subject: Land use and rent (land and natural resources) revisted OR geolibertarianism by other means — Part 2: current system — effects

Effects of privatizing land and natural resources should be self-evident.

Any benefits that accrue to the masses (indeed, if any) go to the current generation, future generations are ripped-off, swindled out of their rightful inheritance.

Wages are depressed since artificially impoverished (through swindling) people are in a weaker negotiating position.

Since all most people get are artificially deflated wages they live at or near subsistence. As a result they aren’t in a realistic position to make money with money. This makes it ridiculously easy for those who have the rent (land and natural resources) to corner capital as well. As a result rates of return on capital are kept artificially high. Making things worse is that those who have been actively impoverished are undesirable mates, esp the dominate sex which in the case of Homo dolosus dolosus (Latin for crafty, cunning, sly, deceitful, (wise, wise my ass)).

Those stuck with slumlords aren’t in a position to negotiate either. They don’t have cars so they can move to places where public transport is too poor to be of practical use even if it is available. Any money they come into goes into the slumlords’ pockets and drives up land prices.

So policies which raise wages and depress returns on investment are good things. Ideally, rates are forced down without expanding the money supply faster than the rate of economic growth. It may be best to set the value of gold high and require high levels of backing that are slowly lowered if necessary to allow high economic growth which requires that deflation not be too severe. I see today’s rates of economic growth as being too slow. Trading inflation (even financial asset inflation) for higher economic growth is a false trade-off. The problems are overconsumption, underinvestment, and often (especially during depressions) lack of ingenuity to prevent underinvestment. The root case of (at least some) depressions is lack of ingenuity rather than the apparent underconsumption.

Subject: Land use and rent (land and natural resources) revisted OR geolibertarianism by other means — Part 1: current system — advantages

I’ve been thinking a lot about this one lately. Given the mobility of finanacial “capital” and the fixed-source nature of rent (land and natural resources) (plus the fact that surface area cannot be moved and is difficult/expensive to make) I wonder about the workability of taxes on land and natural resources. It is true that taxing the value of surface area has fewer problems in a global economy. It is not however, without some problems.

Land and natural resources were capitalized in a manner that is no different than theft by pirates, the only difference is that it was the government and elites that did the pirating.

Despite being very inequitable, the current system has its advantages. The various aspects and a discussion of each follows:

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP allows for flexibility that is more and more necessary as the rate of change increases. Even goergists/geolibertarians do not wish to nationalize land.

ABILITY OF LAND OWNERS TO HOLD OUT: I’m not so sure this is advantageous, but I wonder if there is another side to this story. Would a 95-99% tax make land owners who cannot move there property too much at mercy of the jurisdictions they are in and the organizations and people around them?

MARKET CAPITALIZATION: In nations and regions of anarchy (or more like chaos, which is quite different) it isn’t possible to use the market value of real estate as security for loans. This seems to interfer with economic development, or so today’s conventional wisdom goes.